it's a three pager, so just gonna post the link. You wouldn't think the guy was an artist, but it sheds some light on him as a whole. i like these type of stories that show the human side of NFL players. The more I read these type of things, the more i realize the amount of adversity a lot of NFL players have had to deal with in their life. Not many people think of it that way. i mean, the guy wrote a children's book (and illustrated it)...formed his own NPO. pretty interesting stuff. http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/f...ragedies-including-death-son-article-1.969039
Jets' Aaron Maybin has persevered through a life filled with loss The phones rang in two waves the morning of Sept. 27 at the South Carolina home Aaron Maybin built his parents with his first-round payday. Dolores Maybin, the aunt who for months cooked her nephew hearty meals so he could keep up his playing weight, had lost her year-long battle with leukemia. Not an hour later, Maybin’s agents called: The Jets wanted him back. Like so many other times in his life, the 23-year-old wasn’t sure what to feel. But he knew he needed to be in Florham Park the following morning, to begin his second chance with the team that gave his career a second chance. Maybin has since looked less like the sack-less player once deemed a draft bust, and more like the explosive pass-rusher the Buffalo Bills thought they had when they took Maybin with the No. 11 pick in 2009. In his aunt’s final text message to him, she wrote that she couldn’t hand-pick a better team for Maybin than the Jets, and that is in fact where his improbable resurgence has occurred. He is tied for the NFL’s lead in forced fumbles (three) and the Jets’ lead in sacks (three) after just four games and 40-some plays — a month’s worth of vindication spawned from 2 1/2 years of resilience. He has next week’s game at Buffalo “circled on my calendar.” Maybin said he never believed his talents would expire in upstate New York, or bought into the widespread criticism attached to his name, or questioned if highs would someday replace the early lows. He has, he explained, experienced truer lows. “When people ask me why I have such a nonchalant attitude about certain things, it’s because I’ve been through so much worse than that,” Maybin said last week. “… If ain’t nothing knocked me out by now, come on. I’m going to be here.” • • • The motor Jets coach Rex Ryan calls “relentless” has been present in Maybin since birth. His father, Michael Maybin, could not stop his firstborn from running or settle him still for a moment to snap a photo. Doctors in Baltimore diagnosed Maybin with borderline attention deficit disorder, but his parents sought solutions other than the drug Ritalin. Michael Maybin went to warehouse stores, buying 500-sheet reams of paper and mounds of clay, which Maybin busily tore through sketching and sculpting. He tried baseball, and football, and wrestling. His father, who retired last year from the Baltimore City Fire Department to start a Pentecostal church in South Carolina, can’t remember a time when he didn’t talk to his son like an adult. In January 1995, he told him, “Your mom and I are going to the hospital, and we’ll come back in a few days with your baby sister.” Michael Maybin returned to face his 6-year-old alone, explaining why his mom didn’t come home. The former Constance Williams, a one-time lacrosse captain at Rutgers, had developed preeclampsia late in her pregnancy. The dangerous condition, typified by rising blood pressure, escalated during childbirth. Doctors revived her stillborn baby, a daughter named in her memory, but Maybin lost his mother. “We slept together, we ate together, to get through that moment,” Michael Maybin said. “He comforted me, and I comforted him. We’re probably closer than most fathers and sons.” Maybin thinks about his mother each day, but his younger sister Connie, now 16, helps their family remember her without even trying. She shares her mother’s face and mannerisms: How she sits, her habit of biting her lip, her quick temper. “When I haven’t seen her in a while and she’ll come around, it’s like I’m looking at a young version of my mother walk into a room,” Maybin said. “It’s tough sometimes. It messes with your head.” Michael Maybin remarried, to an English missionary named Violette Grant, with the support of his late wife’s family. Maybin calls her “Mom,” allowing her love to support him then and now. She has steered the family through trying stretches, including the loss of her husband’s eighth and ninth siblings, both to cancer. Dolores Maybin developed multiple myeloma, which progressed into leukemia and took her life. Even after she was diagnosed in September 2010, she insisted on cleaning and cooking for Maybin, carefully allotting enough protein to offset a lightning-quick metabolism that he says can burn 10 pounds in a single workout. “She would have so loved all of this,” Maybin says, arms opening to the lobby of Jets headquarters and referring to his renewed opportunity. “I’m not a person that is too trusting of people. Any time that you go through a turbulent time in your life, I think you really see the people that are really in your corner and the people that aren’t.” • • • Tacori Maybin, 15 months old, crawls all over her father “like a jungle gym” as he speaks on the phone about how she’s the best thing that ever happened to him. Maybin says she looks just like him, a ball of energy but still an easygoing baby. She entered the world last July, just hours after Maybin’s son was stillborn, a tragic swing from a parent’s most devastating moment to the most joyful. “As worried and hurting as I was, I still had to be alert and concerned, because she was due to come a few hours afterward,” Maybin said. “It was a stressful and scary time. I spent a lot of time in prayer, hoping she was born healthy. It was a process that made me and her a lot closer in the end; I was that much more grateful she is here and healthy.” He sees Tacori, who lives in Virginia with her mother, every few weeks during the season and every week in the offseason. The art that busied Maybin as a frenzied child has been a lifelong endeavor, and his daughter is now his favorite subject. He often collaborates with Matthew Rice, a close friend and former Penn State defensive lineman who started an art business after his football career ended. At Maybin’s home in downtown Baltimore, they sketch together and paint in oil and acrylics. Rice watches Maybin labor to capture the deep and complex emotions he feels for his daughter, not satisfied enough to deem any canvas yet complete. Maybin’s artwork is evidence of his journey the past two years, a professional and personal trial. “I had a lot of appreciation for him persevering and pushing through,” Rice said. “He was dealing with those things off the field, and dealing with a lot of ridicule on the field.” • • • LaVar Arrington entered the obscure destination in Maryland into his GPS, en route to meet the Ryan twins *— Rex, the Jets head coach, and Rob, then the Browns defensive coordinator *— for a private pre-draft workout with Maybin. Arrington, the former Penn State, Redskins and Giants linebacker whose firm manages Maybin, remembers the defensive-minded Ryan brothers raving about his “son” that day. Two-and-a-half years later, he’s not surprised Maybin’s second opportunity came from Rex Ryan. “Or a first opportunity,” Arrington said. “It depends on how you look at things. Some would say he might not have gotten a real opportunity the first time around.” The Bills had grown frustrated with a lack of production from a first-round pick who received $15 million in guaranteed money. After two seasons without a sack, Maybin was cut during training camp this summer, the team explaining he had not improved and did not fit their scheme. Those in Maybin’s camp point out he played for three head coaches in two seasons, a supposed defensive centerpiece who had been marginalized. They see his quick success with the Jets as proof his collegiate dominance does translate to the NFL. General manager Mike Tannenbaum said the Jets leaned on their college scouting of Maybin when he was waived by the Bills, deeming his 12-sack season for Penn State in 2008 fresh enough to matter. Maybin did not stick on the 53-man roster after a brief stint in training camp, but the Jets called three weeks later. “What happened in Buffalo stays in Buffalo,” Tannenbaum pledged to Maybin. “We’re going to judge you on what you do from here.” The early returns have been striking. He will not be an every-down outside linebacker for the Jets, but defensive coordinator Mike Pettine explains that Maybin’s speed can challenge any tackle in the league. As he learns more of the playbook and adds one or two counter moves, he can grow into a multi-dimensional pass-rusher. “We’re not looking at it as, ‘We’re going to prove that this kid can play and we made the right decision getting him here,’” Pettine said. “This kid has a skill-set, and we are going to take advantage of it. He can make the kind of impact plays that win games for you.” • • • How gratified would Maybin be if he records a sack against Buffalo next week? “No comment,” he said, with a voice that projects like a megaphone. When his opportunity dried up in Buffalo, he was frustrated. Michael Maybin’s “supremely confident” son did not lose hope, but the father sensed he needed reinforcement. This September, when Maybin was unemployed, brought humility and urgency. October has brought redemption. Maybin plays first for the memory of those he has lost: his aunt, his mother and his son. Next for those he has leaned on. Now he also plays for Ryan *— and maybe, too, for the player the NFL expected two years ago. Maybin’s father has a favorite parable he has used to teach his children: If you place an egg in boiling water, it becomes hard. A cranberry becomes soft and makes the water red. But a coffee bean stays hard, while turning the water dark. You must be a coffee bean, Michael Maybin says. Change your environment for the better, while staying true to yourself *— no matter how hot the water is. Maybin believes this is what he is doing now, that the NFL is finally seeing the real him. “I know I’m not (a bust),” Maybin said. “As many times as I go on the field and keep on playing, eventually that will start to shut people up.” http://www.nj.com/jets/index.ssf/2011/10/jets_aaron_maybin_has_persever.html
it's pretty rare that 3 of the major newspapers in the tri state (Post, Dailynews, Star ledger) do an individual piece or article on 1 player in the same day. that's pretty cool.
Just amazing that the either of the coaching staffs up in Buffalo during Maybin's time there could not find a way to used this young mans talent. Interesting how in a short period of time Rex is finding a way to do it. One has to wonder just how long this Bills run will last if this is the kind of coaching staff that is there now. Anyway sound like a really great kid who will do good things with his life no matter how his NFL career turns out..........
It's very possible that he just fits in very well with Rex and that's why he is playing so good. Sometimes the player just suits the system..
You can't help pulling for this kid after reading that article. Especially now that he's playing for us.
If Maybin can keep up his performance, not only will it kill Bills fans, but it will also kill Pats fans as well. They are definitely pats fans who are asking why didn't the Pats pick him up, because everyone knows they could use any defensive help.
Or we could just look at it as wanting him to succeed because it helps our team, as opposed to how it would piss off opposing fan bases, particularly the Pats who werent even rumored to be interested in Maybin.
Yeah that most definitely is a better statement. Who gives a shit what other fan bases feel or think as long as he's playing well on the Jets
Pats had a chance to grab him when he was available so their loss. Maybin will wreck havoc on QB's for the good guys now.
